THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. 
121 
is shaking under one’s feet there is little zest for observation. On the staircase I noticed a 
fine painting of large size representing the Descent from the Cross, said to be a copy of 
a Vandyke now in Madrid. The College, which boasts about 500 students, possesses the 
nucleus of a natural history museum, and the urbane and hospitable professors conducted 
us through the lecture-rooms and dormitories. The building which contains the latter 
rests upon a stout framework of timber, simply laid upon the ground with the intention 
of neutralising as much as possible the effects of earthquakes. 
Provided with the necessary passes, we also inspected one of the cigar factories of 
world-wide renown, where thousands of women and girls are crowded together in stifling rooms 
—a state of things little likely to gratify an English sanitary inspector. On the 7th the 
Spanish Rear-Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the station visited the ship, which was, 
indeed, generally thronged with visitors, amongst them the Jesuit Fathers and their pupils, who 
seemed to take much interest in the various appliances used for sounding and dredging. 
H.M.S. “Challenger” left Manilla on the nth. A fresh cool breeze we had lately felt 
while at anchor at that port warned us that we were once more approaching colder and 
stormier latitudes. After sailing during the 12th and 13th within sight of the west coast of 
Luzon, we experienced for the next two days the full strength of the north-east monsoon, 
the sea running so high as to render work on board almost impossible. The current induced 
by this wind was found to flow in a W.S.W. direction at the rate of fifty-two knots in 
twenty-four hours. With the first rays of the dawn of the 16th we discovered ourselves 
sailing in company with several Chinese junks, and a few hours later, a portion of the oldest 
empire in the world appeared above the waves in the shape of a chain of rocky islands, backed 
up in the distance by high mountain ranges seemingly destitute of all vegetation. He must 
be a callous traveller who could behold for the first time without a feeling of the most intense 
interest the shores of China—a country which has played so great a part, and is destined to 
play one yet more important, in the history of mankind. Covering an area equal to one- 
tenth of the whole habitable globe, its population—estimated, according to the latest calculations, 
to amount to between 250 and 300 millions—seems from the earliest times to have invaded 
the neighbouring regions, and now threatens to overflow into both hemispheres. Already, from 
Singapore to Papua, and up through the Philippines to Japan, the skilful artisan, the 
enterprising, prosperous, and often wealthy trader, is John Chinaman, and, as every one 
knows, he has recently made his appearance in large numbers in Australia and in California. 
The civilisation of the most fertile and most beautiful part of the world—that which is 
situated between the tropics — is purely a question of the supply of labour, and the 
accumulation of this vast people, inferior to none in its aptitude for all the arts of ci\ llised 
life, seems like a providential arrangement to supply this want. Of all races, the Chinese 
are proving themselves the most capable of establishing agriculture, trade, and all useful 
arts in regions where the natives are too indolent or too savage to take the first steps 
towards civilisation, and where the climate repels the white man. Besides, the latter has 
not yet emigrated in sufficient numbers to furnish the labour requisite for bringing large 
